This packaging forecast is essentially a straight forward extrapolation of current trends seen in the past five years of Nielsen scans. The only significant adjustment was increasing the percentage of imported wines from the current 30% of total sales to a 35% level for 2025. Some economists have predicted that imports may reach 50% of US sales, but that level would reduce domestic production to levels below that which was achieved in 2014.

The forecast assumes that much of the imported wine would extremely competitive in price, and the model assumes that some of the lower cost packages will have a difficult time rebounding from recent flat sales in a competitive market.

It is noted here that straight line forecasts often “miss” some trends and market changes. Nevertheless, it is a good practice to construct a model based on current trends so that future changes in condition can be identified as supporting or inhibiting the original assumptions.

Under the assumptions used here, the 2025 market is expected to be 45% larger than seen in 2010. This is consistent with the steady increase in per capita wine consumption observed over the past 20 years, and is basically a steady, 2.5% annual volume increase.

Methodology: Percentages of volume by package type were pulled from Nielsen Wine Scans from 2010 to 2014. These percentages were the basis of future product mix and applied to total US wine sales taken from the Wine Institute from 2010 thru 2013. Subsequent years were based on wine volume forecasts based on population growth and per capita wine consumption projections by state.